The Malice of Fortune
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Narrated by:
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Adrian Paul
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Carlotta Montanari
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John Lee
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Fred Sanders
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By:
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Michael Ennis
About this listen
Against a teeming canvas of Borgia politics, Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci come together to unmask an enigmatic serial killer, as we learn the secret history behind one of the most controversial works in the western canon, The Prince....
When Pope Alexander dispatches a Vatican courtesan, Damiata, to the remote fortress city of Imola to learn the truth behind the murder of Juan, his most beloved illegitimate son, she cannot fail, for the scheming Borgia pope holds her own young son hostage. Once there, Damiata becomes a pawn in the political intrigues of the pope’s surviving son, the charismatic Duke Valentino, whose own life is threatened by the condottieri, a powerful cabal of mercenary warlords. Damiata suspects that the killer she seeks is one of the brutal condottierri, and as the murders multiply, her quest grows more urgent. She enlists the help of an obscure Florentine diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Valentino’s eccentric military engineer, Leonardo da Vinci, who together must struggle to decipher the killer’s taunting riddles: Leonardo with his groundbreaking "science of observation" and Machiavelli with his new "science of men". Traveling across an Italy torn apart by war, they will enter a labyrinth of ancient superstition and erotic obsession to discover at its center a new face of evil - and a truth that will shake the foundations of western civilization.
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An Addictive Series
- By Bibliophile1963 on 10-17-16
By: C. S. Harris
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Mirror Mirror
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough, Kate Forbes, Barbara Rosenblat, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1502, and seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives at Montefiore, the farm of her father, Don Vicente. But one day a noble entourage makes its way up to the farm. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia, no one can claim innocence for very long. When Borgia sends Don Vicente on a quest, he leaves Bianca under the care of Lucrezia. She plots a dire fate for the young girl in the woods below the farm, but salvation can be found in the dark forest as well.
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Interesting re-telling of the fairy tale.
- By Patricia on 03-04-10
By: Gregory Maguire
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Oil and Marble
- A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo
- By: Stephanie Storey
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome 50-year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-20s, desperate to make a name for himself. Michelangelo is a virtual unknown when he returns to Florence and wins the commission to carve what will become one of the most famous sculptures of all time: David.
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Fact and Fiction Fuse for a Great Listen
- By bec/audiothing on 07-21-16
By: Stephanie Storey
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I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire
- Ravenloft: Strahd, Book 1
- By: P. N. Elrod
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Some of the parchment pages were the color of cream, thick and substantial, made to last many, many lifetimes. Other pages were thin and desiccated, positively yellow from age, and crackled alarmingly as Van Richten turned them over. There were no ornate illuminations, no fussy borders, only lines of plain text in hard black ink. The flowing handwriting was a bit difficult to follow at first; the writer's style of calligraphy had not been in common use for 300 years. No table of contents, but from the dates it looked to be some kind of history.
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Love it...just one complaint....
- By Ryan Conrad on 03-15-14
By: P. N. Elrod
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The Ashes of London
- By: Andrew Taylor
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.
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Entertaining Historical Fiction
- By Simone on 05-01-17
By: Andrew Taylor
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The Iron King
- The Accursed Kings, Book 1
- By: Maurice Druon
- Narrated by: Peter Joyce
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From the publishers that brought you A Game of Thrones comes the series that inspired George R.R. Martin’s epic work. France became a great nation under Philip the Fair - but it was a greatness achieved at the expense of her people, for his was a reign characterised by violence, the scandalous adulteries of his daughters-in-law, and the triumph of royal authority.
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Historical Goodie
- By Syd Young on 08-03-13
By: Maurice Druon
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My Name Is Red
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Erdag Goknar - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of 16th-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.
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Complex and interesting
- By Kathleen on 05-13-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
- A Novel
- By: C. W. Gortner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In this brilliantly imagined novel, acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power. From the fairy-tale chateaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, this is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.
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Pretty good but historical details are terrible
- By Kindle Customer on 07-10-11
By: C. W. Gortner
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The Crown
- By: Nancy Bilyeau
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In this debut historical thriller, an aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father’s life and preserve all she holds dear. When novitiate nun Joanna Stafford learns her rebel cousin is condemned by King Henry VIII to be burned at the stake, she makes the decision to break the sacred rule of enclosure and flee her Dominican order in Dartford to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, Sir Richard Stafford, is sent to the Tower of London.
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Torture
- By S. Wells on 03-24-13
By: Nancy Bilyeau
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The Queen's Bastard
- A Novel of Elizabeth I and Arthur Dudley
- By: Robin Maxwell
- Narrated by: Angele Masters
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Historians have long whispered that Elizabeth "the Virgin Queen's" passionate, lifelong affair with Robin Dudley, Earl of Leicester, may have led to the birth of a son, Arthur Dudley. In this exquisite sequel to The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, Robin Maxwell fashions a stunning fictional account of the child switched at birth by a lady-in-waiting who foresaw the deleterious political consequences of a royal bastard.
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Story? what Story?
- By A User on 06-08-13
By: Robin Maxwell
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In the Name of the Family
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Dunant
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1502, and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, age 22 - already three times married and a pawn in her father's plans - is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class in the dark arts of power and politics.
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One of the best historical fiction novels
- By GrandmaNurseHeather on 04-13-17
By: Sarah Dunant
What listeners say about The Malice of Fortune
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- KAWAM
- 09-16-12
Two Mediocre Hams Read Silly Story
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Oh, let's say a coherent story not dependent on ever-escalating scenes of gruesome violence against women, for starters. I'd sort of expected more Machiavelli -- you know, The Prince -- and less over-the-top genre murder.
The plot is ho-hum, the characters unbelievable and shallow.
What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?
Let me count the ways --
Female was unintelligible and the male's various voices turned me off to key characters, Da Vinci, especially. What a pity.
But peeve-above-all is this -- presumably these characters are narrating in their own languages, i.e., "Damieta" is reading from her own letter. So WHY these clownish and unintelligible Italian accents?
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Boredom
Any additional comments?
I'm with Steven -- never again buy a book that hasn't yet been reviewed. Lesson learned.
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16 people found this helpful
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- mamasunset
- 12-09-12
What on Earth is she saying? The nobbles.........
The female non-Englsh speaking illiterate narrator destroys this possibly interesting book. What a disaster! Who on Earth chose this woman to read in a language she does not understand? "The nobbles........" I think was supposed to be "nobles." I could not coninue. " The nobbles....." " the nobbles....." Argh. Shame. A total waste of a credit.
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- Paula Johnson
- 03-20-15
What did she say?
What did you like best about The Malice of Fortune? What did you like least?
Carlotta Montanari ruined the book for me. She destroyed the English language. It seemed clear she is not used to reading English and didn't always, if ever, understand what she was reading. I just couldn't understand her and had to stop listening. She is one of the worst readers I have heard so far.
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- Pam Guthrie
- 09-20-12
So Much Work
What did you like best about The Malice of Fortune? What did you like least?
The story is so good, but Carlotta Montanari's reading was very challenging for me to follow, and so not very engaging.
I love the idea of having the story read with an Italian accent, but often, an unusually accented syllable or strange vowels means that I have to try to figure out what she said, and lose the thread of what she is saying.
Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?
It was someone difficult to follow the plot since the narrator's accent was so thick. I would rather not work so hard to understand the story.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?
The male voices worked really well. I wished the female narrator was a native English speaker, or had a softer accent. I usually follow foreign accents easily, but this one was a lot of work.
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10 people found this helpful
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- JC
- 09-21-12
The Narration Lost Me
I really like the premise of the story and so wanted to listen to this book. However, I quit after five chapters. Carlotta Montanari's Italian accent was so distracting that I simply could not follow the book. Accent's are great for character dialogue, but not narration. Why the Publisher/Ennis chose this method of narration is beyond me. Be sure and listen to the sample before you purchase. I should have. I wish I could get my money/credit back on this one.
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16 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-23-12
For Lover's of Italian History
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially knowing that much of the story comes from the papers of the actual characters. I will say however, that to follow the plot, one must have more than a passing acquaintance with Italian history.
As for the narration, I was less enthusiastic. I know nothing of Carlotta Montanari's background, but I found her very difficult to listen to, not because of her accent, but because it sounded as if she were reading English not completely understanding what she was reading. Adrian Paul on the other hand, did an excellent job as long as he was reading the part of Machiavelli. I hear Italian spoken everyday, as well as English spoken by Italians, and I think his accent was quite authentic. Once he switched to other characters, however, whether da Vinci or Cesare Borgia, the characterization was pretty bad and was quite distracting. The production would have been far superior had they hired a few more actors.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Charles
- 01-04-13
Awful narrator
I tried to like this book, it had a great concept and it's a genre that I like. The story was fine but I just couldn't tolerate the narration by the Italian woman reader. Because her accent was so strong you had to concentrate all the time just to get the words she was saying. Plus she had zero animation in her voice, maybe because it wasn't her native language. If had gotten to the later parts read by someone else I might have liked the book more. As it was, I just couldn't stand it and quit in the first segment. Absolutely don't buy this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Linda
- 04-02-13
Narration is tough
What did you love best about The Malice of Fortune?
I came to care about the characters and the underlying mystery once my ear adjusted to the accents!
What other book might you compare The Malice of Fortune to and why?
Can't think of any I would compare it with-maybe The Name of the Rose?
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
Although the idea of using Italian readers to provide atmosphere is laudable, the accents (especially of the female reader) were so thick that it took some time to adjust. The male reader used some really odd voices to differentiate characters-DaVinci was particularly odd and funny.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Don't know
Any additional comments?
The story itself is quite interesting and the atmosphere of Renaissance Italy is exciting once you get past the accents.
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- goddess_of_pipework
- 09-21-12
absorbing story, so-so narration
What did you love best about The Malice of Fortune?
The relationship between the three main characters, Damiata, Macciavelli, and DaVinci, is very interesting. All three are brilliant, passionate, and driven.
Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?
The plot was interesting, although it relied to heavily on gruesome murders to advance the story.
What three words best describe the narrators’s voice?
The narration was only so-so. I could have done without Adrian Paul's bogus Italian accent, and his attempts at the voices of DaVinci and Cesare Borgia. He should have either not attempted it, or the producers should have added cast members.
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9 people found this helpful
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- P. Land
- 01-28-13
THe Narration is Impossible to Understand!
The Carlotta Montanari portion of the narration has such a heavy pseudo-Italian accent that I can barely understand it. The story may be interesting, but it is just to hard to concentrate ALL the time to get the meaning of the words. Why not just read it in unaccented English?
This technique of using the accent of the language that the character would be using at the time makes no sense, because the person is speaking English, which they would not because they would speak their own language. But, they are speaking not their own language, but English, which they do not speak, so why ACCENT it at all.
It is used often when the characters are not English, but they would NOT be speaking English, so why accent it at all. Makes no sense to me.
I can't judge the story since I could not tolerate listening since the Italian woman was going to be narrating all the way through to at least Chapter 6. Had to give up.
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